Notice Board

Art NOW series featuring Amethyst First Rider and Michelle Sylvestre
November 17 | Noon | University Recital Hall
Free admission, everyone welcome

We are excited to be collaborating with the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and the Niitsitapi Pod of the Abundant Intelligences research program, on this artist talk. Abundant Memory, Relational Intelligence is on view in the Dr. Margaret (Marmie) Perkins Hess Gallery until January 23, 2026.

Amethyst First Rider is a member of the Kainai Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, Alberta, Canada and married to Leroy Little Bear. She is a leader in the performing arts community for more that 20 years, producing and directing plays depicting Aboriginal stories and culture. Her experience in the arts has included dance productions, consulting for the University of California, Berkeley’s planetarium, as well as narration and production in the National Film Board’s documentary: Kainayssini Imanistaiswa, The People Go On. She co-conceived Iniskim an immersive puppet lantern performance celebrating the reintegration of Bison into the natural ecosystem of Banff National Park. She is central to the development and success of The Buffalo: A Treaty of Cooperation, Renewal and Restoration signed by over 30 First Nations and Tribes in Canada and the USA. It is the biggest modern Treaty amongst First Nations. Its purpose is to “once again welcome the Buffalo to live among us” and it recognizes “Buffalo as a wild free-ranging animal and as an important of the ecological ecosystem.” She is also a founding-advisor to the Kainai Ecosystem Protection Association.

Michelle Sylvestre holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art (2017) and a Master of Fine Arts in New Media (2021) from the University of Lethbridge, on Treaty 7 Territory in Alberta. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought, where her research focuses on the heteropatriarchal, colonial biases, and exclusionary foundations embedded within artificial intelligence systems.  As an interdisciplinary artist, Sylvestre’s work spans public art commissions and gallery exhibitions, engaging installation, sculpture, performance, and digital media. Her practice explores questions of identity, community, memory, and relational accountability. Using a research creation methodology, she merges critical inquiry with artistic practice to address urgent sociocultural issues and advocate for equity and inclusion in technologies.  Sylvestre is a Researcher in Residence with the Indigenous-led Abundance Intelligence Niitsitapi Pod at the Centre for Indigenous Art, Research, and Technology, and she teaches sessionally in the New Media Department at the University of Lethbridge. She is honoured to be the first student from the University of Lethbridge to be awarded the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship. 
Image courtesy of the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery.